ren is turned on only by his own prow- ess. He is the apple of his eye, and he just about admits it. "If I'm gonna have sex-and I am, because I'm young and rich and famous and talented and handsome, so it's a la'U)--I'd rather do it with a guy," he says. "But when all is said and done, IGppy? I'd rather just play ball." In a series of tight, tart illustrative scenes, cross-cut with ballplaying tab- leaux vivants and with IGppy delivering expository asides, like the narrator in "Casey at the Bat," Greenberg demon- strates how Lemming's sexual "mess" as IGppy calls it, seeps into his appar- ently straight teammates, not always to happy effect. A lot of the disturbance takes place in the showers, where the but the victory hugs, the fanny pats, the shower-room larks are now no longer a carefree macho gambol. "What do we do with our stray homosexual im- pulses? We tamp them down, we frus- trate them," IGppy says, trying in vain to be clubhouse psychologist to this crew of inarticulate and disgruntled players. Then, in a John Rocker moment, the Empires' lanky, monosyllabic, newly called-up closer, Shane Mungitt (the excellent Frederick Weller), embold- ened by a string of big wins, finds his tongue in front of reporters. "I don't mind the colored people-the gooks an' the spics an' the coons an' like that," he says as the curtain falls on Act I. "But every nightt' have t' take a shower with a faggot!" Sexual politics on the baseball diamond in Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out. " cast members lather their pecs and their penises and turn Scott Pask's clever set into a kind of well-hung homoerotic h "V' . " eaven. oure not gettlng me, man, says a vacant teammate, Toddy Koovitz (Dominic Fumusa), apparently annoyed at having to wear a towel over his pri- vates. "Why do I have to go around this room, which is, has been, which is this sancchewy, rackled with se1f- consciousness about my body?" When Darren responds to Toddy's misspoken sexual paranoia, his sang-froid broad- casts his superiority. "Well, 'cause if you have some hope of reëntering decent society, they make ya," he says. "They 1--" ." Ò Inslst on It ; On the surface, the team seems to S2 take its star's homosexuality in stride, In the prevailing politically correct climate, Lemming finds himself sud- denly turned from an object of envy to an object of pity: His sense of grandios- ity is more offended than his sense of justice. "I liked you before-lovedyou in a manly sort of way," Kippy tells him. " B ' h " " I ' ut now you re . . . more uman. sn t that a demotion?" Lemming replies. Mungitt is suspended, then reinstated after apologizing, and at one point Lemming finds himself alone in the shower room with the pitcher, who, it h " 1 n1i th o " " C1 seems, as a c ea ness Ing. ean- liness is next to godliness," Lemming jokes-a great line that is lost on his oafish teammate. Mungitt's failure to engage goads Lemming even further. ' these showers ya take. You just tryin' to scrub away the skin?" he asks. "You tryin' to get through all these layers ' f tissue an' organs' n' stuff to get to where the real dirt lies?" Finally, in a moment that plays only partly as a joke, Lem- ming lunges at Mungitt and mortifies him with a kiss. "Our little secret," Lem- ming shouts after him. "You dumb cracker fuck." "Fuck" is the word that Mungitt later reportedly mumbles to himself on the mound as he beans- and kills-an African-American star from another team, thereby transfer- ring his murderous feelings for Lem- ming into the opposing player: an act, if you'll forgive the pun, of projectile identification. What Greenberg's story suggests is that by coming out you risk let- ting in the unknown, both good and bad. Lemming's whim leads to his un- witting collusion in a murder, to the cooling of his friendship with Kippy, and to Mungitt's banishment from baseball. Against all these negatives, Greenberg counterposes the blessing of connection-between Lemming and his timid, closeted accountant, Mason Marzac (the scene-stealing Denis O'Hare), who is unexpectedly liberated by Lemming's revelations. Neither man starts out with a commu- nity; Lemming feels above everyone, while Marzac, as he admits, feels be- neath everyone. In the course of be- friending Lemming, Marzac falls in love with baseball, too. To Marzac, the home-run trot-the player rounding the bases and pausing for ce1ebration- becomes profoundly poetic. "That's what we do in our ceremonies, isn't it?" he says. "Honor ourselves as we pass through time?" At the finale, a Cinderella moment in the empty stadium after the World Series has ended, Lemming turns to Marzac just before he exits. "What a fuck of a season, huh?" he says. Marzac, in his Empires baseball cap and his giant "We're No. I" foam glove, echoes his friend's sentiment. "It was. . . tragic," he says, then adds, "What will we do till spring?" Whether on the stage or in the stadium, Greenberg seems to be saying, play mediates tragedy because it kills time and answers woe with wonder. In this realm, as "Take Me Out" marve1- 10us1y demonstrates, the spirit can be lost and sometimes found. . THE NEW YORKER, JULY 22, 2002 81